Thursday, January 29, 2015

Third Age Thursday 13

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace. A
self-contained world, five miles long, located in neutral territory. A place of
commerce and diplomacy for a quarter of a million humans and aliens. A shining
beacon in space, all alone in the night. It was the dawn of the Third Age of
mankind. The year the Great War came upon us all. This is the story of the last
of the Babylon stations. The year is 2259. The name of the place is Babylon 5." -- John Sheridan

SHERIDAN, BABY!!

That's right - I'm now well into Season 2 of my detailed re-watch of Babylon 5. (See how the opening quote has changed?) The re-watch is part of my research for Dreams Given Form, which will be an unprecedented guide to the universe of JMS's brilliant, long-arc show that I'm co-authoring for ECW Press, scheduled to be released sometime in 2016. As I've said here before, deeply re-watching Season 1 brought me new insights, including an almost complete revising of my opinion about the character of Jeffrey Sinclair. (Further, knowing what we now know about the seven hells Michael O'Hare, the actor who brought Sinclair to life, was going through, I get chills watching a few scenes in that season, I can tell you. Not sure what I'm talking about? Click here.)

But for now, Sinclair is serving as Earth's first ambassador to Minbar and John Sheridan has been plucked from his rootin', tootin', shootin' command of a Omega-class destroyer to ride herd over the diplomatic squabbles of dozens of races on B5. It's a post he's not especially suited for, in part because of his role in the Earth-Minbari war, in which he managed to destroy the Minbari flagship through trickery. That action made him a hero on Earth, but the Minbari refer to him as "Starkiller," making him a very unlikely choice to command B5.

However, life is strange and it'll get stranger. But now it comes with oranges!

PS - I should probably mention at this point that Sheridan [along with Buffy] served at the cake-topper at my wedding. Make of that what you will.

Yes, trust me - I know that the Breaking Bad finale was last night - fear not, thoughts on that are coming for "Walter White Wednesday...

Copyright Notice

Look, I'm flattered if you read something here and like it enough to want to want to rip it off. Or even if you dislike it enough to want to rip it apart. In either case, the content of this blog is mine - I'm responsible for it and you are not to use it without first obtaining permission from me.

Copyright. It's not just a good idea. It's the law.

It really is - see Article I, Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

K. Dale Koontz

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Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.